Literature Timeline 1500-1660 - The Renaissance
800-400 BC - This period was dominated by Homer and other Greek
tragedians
 Authors/Works
- The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer
- Oedipus the King by Sophocles
- Medea by Euripedes
 Epic Poem
250 BC-180 AD - Writers of the Roman Empire are most noted in this
time period
 Famous authors from this period: Virgil, Horace, Ovid
- The Aeneid by Virgil
- “A picture is a poem without words.” “He who has begun has
half done. Dare to be wise; begin!” - Horace
- “Happy is the man who has broken the chains which hurt the
mind, and has given up worrying once and for all.” “Take rest;
a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.” - Ovid
450-1066 - Old English (Anglo-Saxon) Period
 Authors/Works
- Beowulf
- The rise of Haiku Poetry
- Tale of Genji by Japanese writer Murasaki Shibiku (written
around the year 1000)
1066-1500 - Middle English Period
 Authors/Works
- Persian poet Rumi (1207-73)
- Petrarch, Italian writer, inventor of the sonnet (1304 -74)
- The Divine Comedy by Dante, Italian writer (1307-1321)
- The Decameron by Italian writer Boccacio (1313-75)
- The Canterbury Tales (1387-1400) by Geoffrey Chaucer,
British writer (1343-1400)
- 1450 - invention of the printing press
 1558 - 1603 Elizabethan Age
- Francois Rabelais, French writer (1490-1553)
- William Shakespeare, British poet and playwright (1564-1616)
- Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, British writer (1564-93)
- Don Quixote (1605-1615) by Miguel de Cervantes, Spanish
writer
- Ben Johnson, British author (1572-1637)
- John Donne, British poet (1572-1631)
- The Faerie Queen (1589) by Edmund Spenser, British poet
- 1599 - The Globe Theatre was built
 1603 - 1625 Jacobean Age
- Andrew Marvel, British poet (1621-78)
- Henry Vaughan, British poet (1621-95)
 1625 - 1649 Caroline Age
 1649 - 1669 Commonwealth Period
- Paradise Lost (1667) by John Milton, British author (1608-74)
1660-1785
 1660-1700 The Neoclassical Period The Restoration
 1700-1745 The Augustan Age (Age of Pope)
 1650-1750 Puritan/Colonial Literature (America)
- Tartuffe (1664) by French writer Moliere (1622-73)
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744) British poet
- Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Moll Flanders (1722) by Daniel
Defoe, English writer (1660-1731)
- Gulliver's Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift, English writer (1667-
1745)
- Candide (1759) by French writer Voltaire (1694-1778)
- Samuel Johnson, English writer (1709-84)
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, French writer and philosopher (1712-78)
- Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (1741) by American
Jonathan Edwards
- The Castle of Otranto (1764) by Horace Walpole (first gothic
novel)
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), German writer
1750-1800 - The Age of Reason (America)
 American Revolution Authors
- Thomas Jefferson
- Thomas Paine
- Patrick Henry
- Poems on Various Subjects (1773) by Phyllis Wheatley, African-
American poet (1753-1784)
- Common Sense (1776) by Thomas Paine
1785-1830 - The Romantic Period; The Gothic Period (approx. 1785-
1820, though it lasted longer in America)
 William Blake, English poet (1757-1827)
 William Wordsworth, English poet (1770-1850)
 "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
English poet (1772-1834)
 Jane Austen, English author (1775-1817)
 Lord Byron, English poet (1788-1824)
 John Keats, English poet (1795-1821)
 Alfred, Lord Tennyson, English poet (1809-92)
 Percy Bysshe Shelley, English poet (1792-1822)
 Frankenstein (1818) Mary Shelley, British writer (1797-1851)
 The Last of the Mohicans (1826) by James Fenimore Cooper,
American novelist (1789-1851)
 Edgar Allan Poe - American writer influenced by Gothic
movement (1809-49)
 Robert Browning, English poet (1812-89)
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning, English poet (1806-61)
 Charles Dickens, British author (1812-1870)
 Emily Dickinson, American writer (1830-1886)
 Henry James, American writer (1843-1916)
 Transcendentalist writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David
Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller
 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American
Slave (1845) by Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)
 Jane Eyre (1847) by Charlotte Bronte, British writer (1816-55)
 Wuthering Heights (1848) by Emily Bronte, British writer (1818-48)
 The Scarlet Letter (1850) by Nathaniel Hawthorne, American
writer
 Moby Dick (1851) by Herman Melville, American writer
 Walden (1854) by Henry David Thoreau, American essayist
 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) by Harriet Jacobs
(1813-1897)
 Les Miserables (1862) by Victor Hugo, French writer
 Vanity Fair (1848) by William Makepeace Thackeray, English
novelist
 Madame Bovary (1857) by Gustave Flaubert, French writer
 Little Women (1868) by Louisa May Alcott, American author
 Middlemarch (1872) by George Eliot (a.k.a. Marian Evans),
British writer
 Paul Lawrence Dunbar, American poet (1872-1906)
 A Doll's House (1879) by Henrik Ibsen, Norwegian dramatist
(1828-1906)
 Huckleberry Finn (1885) by American writer Mark Twain (a.k.a.
Samuel Clemens, 1835-1910)
 The Red Badge of Courage (1895) by Stephen Crane, American
author (1871-1900)
 The Awakening (1899) by Kate Chopin, American writer
 The Yellow Wallpaper (1899) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, American
writer
 Leaves of Grass (1900) by Walt Whitman, American poet